Feature article
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Stumbling into splendor: Best Campsites often arrive unexpectedly
By Doug Janz
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| Johnson City writer Doug Janz writes for GoTriCities about outdoor adventures in the Tri-Cities and beyond |
A seemingly simple trip to an apparently easy-to-locate destination turns into a drive all over the Eastern seaboard. It happens to people all the time.
It happened to me not so long ago. In my quest to find an Appalachian Trail shelter north of Damascus, Va., I spent several hours driving the backroads, backtracking, asking directions, squinting at various maps for long periods of time, and eventually landing somewhere completely different from my destination.
I have a college education, a generally good sense of direction, and the ability to read simple maps. I have almost always found the place I was looking for, but occasionally my mind is waylaid by causes unknown.
Several years ago I left a friend’s house in Norfolk, Va., passed by a golf driving range we’d been to the night before, drove for 45 minutes getting onto interstates and taking state highways, and looked up to find myself passing that same driving range.
On another occasion, I hiked for three hours, only to end up at the same trail sign as before.
Searching for this AT trail/road crossing gave me much the same feeling. Somewhere between Beartree Day Use Area and Elk Garden, Va., I took one of multiple wrong turns and ended up on Whitetop Mountain.
I was searching for a trail shelter in order to check out the hikers’ journals generally found at all AT shelters. They are a good and up-to-date way to see what this year’s hikers are experiencing — whether the hospitality has been good, how the weather has been, what Trail Days was like in Damascus, etc.
But my window of opportunity was closing. My start was several hours late, due to the fact that I usually operate on Belushi Time (based on John Belushi’s character in “Animal House,” who has a watch set about six hours off from everyone else’s) and therefore had only a small margin for error, and every minute I spent wandering around Jefferson National Forest cut into that margin.
Therefore I needed to find a shelter located close to the road, because the hike time was diminishing as darkness edged closer. The solution was along a secondary highway numbered 600, where the road bisected the trail.
It sounded simple, but despite using three references — maps of the AT and the Virginia Creeper Trail, and the Appalachian Trail Conference guidebook, with detailed information on trail landmarks — I was still baffled. I had a friend with me who took on the navigational duties, but even putting together our mapping skills, we were not able to locate our spot.
It was comical. We asked a local who’d just opened a bike rental spot along the Creeper Trail, and he gave us two points of entry to the AT, both of which we found but neither of which were correct. At times it appeared that 600 did not exist, then that it existed somewhere north well north of us.
This was not a bad trip, though. The weather was nice, the scenery was worthwhile, and the sense of desperation was only mild. Things could be much worse, we realized, so we took it upon ourselves to enjoy our predicament.
Somewhere along the way, we began heading uphill, and before we knew it the car had taken us up Whitetop, an interesting mountain that allows you to emerge seemingly into another climate zone.
The geography is different, with fir trees, rolling balds, thick grass and heavy mist. A massive fog bank moved in and we thought we were about to get a storm, but 10 minutes later it was bright and much clearer, typical of mountaintops. The air up there smelled different, too. This was a highland experience, for sure.
The AT travels up Whitetop, and we took an hour or so to stroll along it, going from the wide-open, grassy spaces into a tunnel of beech trees, gnarled into fascinating shapes. There was water flowing everywhere. In the sun again, we found a primo AT campsite complete with soft grassy floor and a flowing spring, just 20 feet off the trail. It was almost too serene and convenient to be true.
There is a feeling you get on top of Appalachian mountains that is like no other — the wind, the fog, the flora, the topography, the smells, the quiet that falls over it all — and after hours in the car searching for a specific spot on the lower AT, we realized we had come upon something probably more rewarding.
We were up high, watching the sun set in a fluorescent pink haze. Down below, under the trees in a trail shelter, the AT logbook was still there. Somewhere.
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Johnson City writer Doug Janz writes for GoTriCities about outdoor adventures in the Tri-Cities and beyond. E-mail him at DouglasJanz@aol.com
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